


Archives and Relics

by rhetoricalrogue



Series: The Cousins Trevelyan [1]
Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Companion Trevelyan (Dragon Age), Non-Linear Narrative, One Shot Collection, alternate universe - companion verse
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-02
Updated: 2019-03-02
Packaged: 2019-11-08 01:50:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,977
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17972189
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rhetoricalrogue/pseuds/rhetoricalrogue
Summary: Collection of stories featuring a companion only Ravena Trevelyan that aren't in the Griffon and the Raven timeline.





	1. Chapter 1

“Hey beanpole!”

“What did your parents do, stretch you out?”

“You’re all bony legs!”

Ravena frowned as several other children from other bannorns made observations about her height. She’d gone through a painful growth spurt recently, shooting up several inches taller than the other ten-year-old girls in her acquaintance. Alone with her family, she was proud that she was still her twin brother’s height and that her older brother Robert had to lift his arm higher over his head when he teasingly played a game of “keep away” with her. Her father had affectionately bragged about having such a handsome quartet of children while her mother had playfully bemoaned the fact that it would only be a matter of time before she was the shortest member of the Trevelyan family.

Yet here, out in public, Ravena couldn’t help but turn her shoulders inward and slump as a way to make those extra inches not quite as noticeable. It had earned her several taps on the back with her mother’s fan and a number of reminders to mind her posture, but worst of all, it hadn’t stopped the ridicule. It was bad enough that she had a lisp that she constantly worried about correcting, but now her gangly arms and skinny legs had decided to add to her woes. 

She spent an afternoon smiling politely and answering questions some of Father’s contemporaries asked her, all while hiding the fact that she was utterly miserable. It seemed as if each Bann had the same comment about comparing her height to her brothers and joking with her father on what he feeds his children, and their wives were even worse when they all gathered in the ladies sitting room for tea. Ravena demurely cast her eyes down to the delicate painted cup she held in her lap while the women laughed at how tall her future husband would have to be if she continued to grow at the rate she was.

It wasn’t until they were home and she was able to be alone that she allowed herself to cry. She was busy staring miserably at her legs as they dangled over the edge of the limb of the tree she had climbed up that she didn’t hear the tree rustling as someone joined her.

Her eldest brother René’s head peeked up from the leaves underneath her. “Room enough for one more?” Not waiting for her answer, he hoisted himself up and sat next to her. “Here,” he offered her a handkerchief embroidered with RET on the corner.

“This is…”

“Raoul’s. I know. I swiped it before I came to find you, so you wouldn’t get all your gross girl-snot on mine when you blew your nose.” That earned him a giggle. “They’re just petty, you know.”

“What?”

“Those girls that were making fun of you today. Maker, I wanted to tell them something, but I never got a chance.” 

“Why do I have to be so tall?” The other girls were petite. Dainty. _Delicate. Their_ mothers didn’t have to let out the hems of their dresses on a regular basis, and none of the girls had to worry about aching knees and hips while trying not to walk around like an awkward newborn foal with knobby knees.

“Can’t help it.” He tipped her chin up so he could look at her. “You’re destined to be a gorgeous, elegant beauty heads above the rest in your station. I mean that, both figuratively and literally.”

“You think so?”

“I wouldn’t have said it otherwise. Those girls know how pretty you are and they’re trying their best to tear you down before you realize how pretty you are.” 

Ravena leaned into her brother’s arm. Even at fifteen, René seemed to know exactly what to say and how to say it to make her feel better. “You think I’m pretty?”

“Well, it runs in the family. _I’m_ devastatingly handsome, so logic says that you in turn must be breathtakingly beautiful.”

She laughed. “I love you.”

René bumped his foot companionably against hers. “I love you too. But just remember, no matter how tall you get, I’m _still_ your big brother. I can and I _will_ still put you in a headlock and mess up your hair.”

“René!”

“Just throwing that out there, ‘Vena. Now can we please get out of this tree? My arse is falling asleep.”

Ravena followed her brother down the tree and the two of them walked back towards the main house. On their walk back, René made a point to rest his arm on the top of her head like he always did, but quickly began to complain about her height and the odd angle his arm had to be at making his shoulder hurt.

She grinned. Maybe being taller wasn’t such a bad thing after all.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ravena is in her early 20s here with her cousin, who also happens to be her mentor, Henri Trevelyan. I haven't quite figured out the age gap between them, but he's probably in his mid- to late-40s here.

Ravena was up to her eyebrows in reference materials when the smell of food brought her up to the surface.

“Eat,” Henri told her, setting a bowl of hearty stew on the tavern’s table far enough away from her work to not damage anything if it happened to spill, yet close enough that the scent made diving back into her paper impossible. 

Setting aside her pen, she stretched the cramped fingers on her right hand. “Well, if this isn’t a change in roles,” she teased, rolling her neck and listening as her back popped.

He grinned and sat down beside her waiting stew with his own bowl. “I figured I owed you one or three instances of looking out for you.”

Ravena snorted. “I stopped counting after our first month of working together.” Without getting up, she scooted along the long bench until she was sitting in front of the bowl he had brought up for her. Her stomach rumbled, loudly informing her that she hadn’t eaten in quite some while. Looking around, she noticed that it was late, so late that most of the louder patrons had either drunken themselves into a stupor or had gone home. She hadn’t minded the noise as she worked; the tavern’s second floor had been mostly uncrowded to begin with and she had tuned out the majority of the conversation and music below into a pleasant background noise to work in.

“Any luck on that amulet?” Henri dug into his own bowl, his long legs stretched under the table and his elbows bumping hers.

Her eyes went over to the bronze amulet she’d been working on for who knew how long now. “It’s a puzzle box, I know that much. It’s Avvar in design and these runes here signify that it either belonged to a follower of Ignar the Clever or that it was used in rites to him.”

Henri shook his head. “Trickster gods, brilliant. And you said it was a puzzle box? Have you cracked it open yet?”

“No.” She tapped her spoon impatiently against the rim of her bowl and tore off a piece of bread Henri had brought with him. “It made my eyes cross after a solid hour of trying to find the right combination of words to line up, so I decided to take a different approach.”

Her cousin leaned back so he could look at the paper she had been scribbling on. “Ah, so that’s why you’ve been writing runes over and over. Do you think there’s some hidden message that unlocks it?”

“It was my first impression, especially when messing with things dealing with a god dubbed _the Clever_. Yet none of them make any sort of sense, no matter what order I place them in. I’m more than likely not taking into account regional dialects or proper syntax, but…” Ravena was still new to being allowed full rein of her research, and even though she knew Henri asked her out of pure curiosity, she couldn’t help but feel as if he were quizzing her to see if the two years of learning in the Chantry and the months of apprenticing with him had stuck.

Henri wiped his hands on his napkin and rose from the bench. “May I?” he asked, looking at Ravena’s notes.

“Knock yourself out.” Not really paying attention to the food she was eating, Ravena watched as Henri scratched at the faint salt and pepper stubble on his chin and regarded the amulet with fresh eyes. The two of them were cousins on the Trevelyan side, and while he didn’t match her in looks as keenly as her brothers and father did, his darker brown eyes, black hair, and certain facial features were close enough that people knew they were related right away. Tilting the amulet this way and that, he furrowed his brows.

“Did you notice all the mentions of fertility rites on the back?” he asked, absently sitting down with his back to the table.

“I did.”

“And did you think of certain, ah, _things_ when putting the words together?”

“I don’t know what you…” she dropped her spoon into the last bit of her stew. “Oh.”

Henri grinned. “Yes, _oh._ ” Starting with the largest metal ring on the outside of the amulet, he began to spin it around until certain runes lined up with ridges engraved on the solid bronze base. He repeated the process for the remaining three rings until something quietly clicked. “And wouldn’t you know, the key to unlocking an ancient artifact was all about _positions_ and how bendy you can get.” He left it unlocked and closed, holding it out on his palm for her.

“Why didn’t you open it?”

He smiled. “You discovered the amulet in the first place and you’ve been working here for hours trying to crack its code. You deserve to find out what’s inside first.”

Ravena looked at him with wide eyes. “Thank you.” She couldn’t put into words how happy her cousin’s words made her, especially since she was still relatively new to their trade. It was a little thing that he did without even thinking, and she appreciated that he treated her as an equal, even when he was teaching her something new.

He nudged her with his shoulder. “You’re quite welcome. Now come on, no time for sentimental episodes! Open it and let’s see what you’ve found!”

Carefully tilting the amulet down and away from both of them and their food – Ravena had heard enough tales of booby traps poisoning or disfiguring careless archeologists – she slid the now unlocked front to the side. “It’s a folded up piece of paper.” Stew forgotten, she rose from her seat and went back to her pile of work, rummaging through the books she had strewn there until she found her notebook. Without opening the folded up paper, she began to quickly sketch out the opened amulet and write notes on her findings. 

“Nice technique,” Henri commented. “I would have forgotten to jot the initial discovery down and only write about it later.”

“I want to be thorough on this one, especially after it gave me fits all day.” Notes complete, she delicately pulled apart the paper, noting that the parchment really wasn’t paper at all, but some sort of animal hide. “It’s a map.”

Henri looked over her shoulder. “So it is. And it looks like I’ve been to this area in my travels before. Pleasant sort of place, but full of snakes.” He shuddered. “Why does it always have to be snakes?”

“There are some more runes printed here. I can’t translate them all here, but I’m sure that by the time we head back to Tantervale and restock our supplies, I’ll have most of it vaguely worked out.”

He looked at her and smirked. “Restock our supplies? And just where do you think we’re going?”

She returned his smirk. “Why Henri Trevelyan,” she began, tapping her fingers excitedly on the scarred wooden table. “We are going on an adventure.”


End file.
